Patna: Bihar Agriculture Minister Sudhakar Singh resigned Sunday from the Mahagathbandhan Cabinet, with many seeing this as a result of Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav’s insistence to not repeat the mistake done in the previous government which faced attacks from leaders of his party.
Sudhakar is the second minister to quit the Nitish Kumar Cabinet after law minister Kartikeya Singh exited in August following his alleged involvement in a kidnapping case. Both the ministers are from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
On Sunday, Sudhakar submitted his resignation letter to Tejashwi. “It’s a sacrifice he [Sudhakar] is making for the cause of farmers. He wanted to avoid being the cause of bitterness between the RJD and the Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)),” RJD state president and Sudhakar’s father Jagdanand Singh told ThePrint.
It is for Tejashwi to take the resignation to its logical end, he said, hinting at forwarding the resignation letter to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who would hand it over to the Governor as per protocol.
Sudhakar Singh’s entry into the Bihar Cabinet in August had given a fodder to the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to target the Mahagathbandhan government. Not only was he embroiled in a rice scam dating back to 2013, Sudhakar had repeatedly embarrassed Nitish with his statements.
At a function of farmers in Kaimur, he declared all his officials were ‘chors’ (thieves) and he was the ‘Sardar of Chors’ (chieftain of thieves). In his public statements, the RJD leader had ridiculed the Krishi roadmap made by Nitish to increase productivity of farmers and demanded reinduction of mandis for farmers to sell their produce.
Mandis in Bihar were abolished by the Nitish government in 2006.
Sudhakar had asked farmers to beat up those agriculture officers who seek bribe to release their quota of fertilisers. If that was not enough, he had a verbal duel with Nitish at a cabinet meeting when the CM objected to his public statements. RJD chief Lalu Prasad had called Sudhakar to his residence and asked him not to make embarrassing statements but the RJD leader refused to buckle down.
Tejashwi, according to RJD sources, asked for Sudhakar’s resignation on Friday on phone and ordered him to quit. The minister sent his resignation on Sunday morning, they added.
“Sudhakar’s statements were becoming a threat to the RJD-JD(U) alliance.” a senior RJD leader said.
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Tejashwi’s growing influence
The “sacrifice” of Sudhakar was not the only step that Tejashwi has taken to ensure Nitish is not humiliated publicly, RJD insiders said.
The deputy chief minister quickly stepped in to clear a potentially embarrassing situation after RJD state president Jagdanand Singh and other RJD MLAs such as Bhai Virendra and Ritlal Yadav claimed last week that Tejashwi will be made the CM in 2023 when Nitish goes to Delhi.
“Jagdanand Singh made that statement in a similar manner in which a father is in a hurry to marry off his daughter,” JD(U) parliamentary party chairman Upendra Kushwaha had told ThePrint.
Tejashwi promptly made a statement that he was not in a hurry to become the CM and that it was great to work under a seasoned politician like Nitish Kumar. On Friday, he got Jagdanand Singh to issue an order to all RJD leaders. “Nobody except deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav is entitled to make a statement on the alliance,” read the order.
In September, RJD national vice-president Shivanand Tiwari had made a statement saying that Nitish should give power to Tejashwi and move to an ashram for politicians. Within a few hours, Shivanand clarified that he was misquoted. But RJD insiders said the volte face was after a prod from the deputy chief minister.
In the previous edition of the Mahagathbandhan government, the late RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh repeatedly attacked Nitish and his governance. Lalu and Tejashwi then remained mute spectators. This was cited as one of the major reasons for Nitish’s exit out from the alliance in 2017.
Similarly, BJP leaders had increasingly attacked Nitish before he decided to quit the NDA government in August. “Tejashwi is now trying to change the party’s image that exists from the ‘Jungle Raj’ [the lawless period during the rule of Lalu and Rabri] days. For this, he needs Nitish Kumar and he does not want the follies of 2015 to be repeated,” a RJD minister asserted.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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